Hashim

Weight restoration is a crucial component of anorexia nervosa treatment. It is a challenging process for a multitude of reasons. Adding to the complexity and the challenge is the fact that during weight restoration, individuals with anorexia nervosa tend to require increasingly more calories to maintain the same rate of weight gain.

That is, individuals need to continually increase their caloric intake, in steps, sometimes upwards of 100 calories (technically, kilocalories) per kilogram per day, to continue gaining weight. For instance, an individual weighing 45 kg may need to eat 4,500+ calories to continue gaining 1-1.5kg (2.2-3.3lbs) a week. Indeed, studies have found that standard resting energy expenditure (REE) equations tend to overestimate caloric needs at the beginning of refeeding but underestimate them in the later stages (Forman-Hoffmann et al. 2006; Krahn et al., 1993).

Definitioner

lean body mass

a component of body composition, calculated by subtracting body fat weight from total body weight: total body weight is lean plus fat; LBM has been described as an index superior to total body weight for prescribing proper levels of medications and for assessing metabolic disorders, as body fat is less relevant for metabolism (11)

fat-free mass (lean body mass)

a component of body composition, calculated by subtracting body fat weight from total body weight: total body weight is lean plus fat; LBM has been described as an index superior to total body weight for prescribing proper levels of medications and for assessing metabolic disorders, as body fat is less relevant for metabolism (11)

a group of subjects which does not receive the experimental treatment but in all other respects is treated in the same way as the experimental group (8)

controls (control group)

a group of subjects which does not receive the experimental treatment but in all other respects is treated in the same way as the experimental group (8)

sample sizes (sample size)

the number of subjects assigned to a treatment condition in an experiment or study (8)

protein

molecules made up of amino acids that are needed for the body to function properly; proteins are the basis of body structures such as skin and hair and of substances such as enzymes, cytokines, and antibodies (3)

sample

a subgroup selected from a larger group of potential subjects (population) (8)